


It's Okay, I Can Wait

by thatwriternextdoor



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Asexuality, Bisexuality, Coach - Freeform, Doctor - Freeform, F/M, Fate, Forced Prostitution, Other, Poetry, Prostitution, Reporter, Soju, Storytelling, Waiting, Writing, figure skating, mentions of abuse, storyteller - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-22 12:33:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14308707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatwriternextdoor/pseuds/thatwriternextdoor
Summary: Bestselling author Yoon Dowoon rocked the very foundations of literary romance with his controversial novel 'Soju', but it would all mean nothing if his Storyteller won't come back home.To the Storyteller:Dawn is still waiting to drink with you,But where, where are you?





	1. O N E

**Author's Note:**

> This story was born at 2:00 am. Lord save us all, and happy journey.

 

_**YOON DOWOON ASKS  'Where Are You?' IN LATEST NOVEL Soju** _

 

 

**By JAE PARK**  
**April 28, 2018**

 

 

New York Times Top Bestselling Author Yoon Dowoon has officially broken into the literary world with the world wide release of his highly anticipated novel, _Soju_. Only hours after hitting the shelves, _Soju_ managed to grab the top spot in the best seller lists and is already rumored to be leaning towards a nomination in The Man Booker Prize For Fiction due to its unconventional plot and storytelling.

 

But what has Soju trending all over the internet (even more so than before) happens to be its mysterious dedication:

 

 _To the Storyteller:_  
Dawn is still waiting to drink with you,  
But where, where are you?

 

Fans have blown up various social media websites like Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook to post theories about their take on the dedication and how it may be related to the novel that succeeds it. Fans claim that the twenty three year old author might actually be searching for a particular person and have taken it up on various social media sites, trending the hashtags like #whereareyou and #soju.

 

Some theories also go as far as to say that Soju might be based after Yoon's own life, since the author has openly admitted to being bisexual and an orphan, but the author himself has not commented on it so far.

 

Soju, named after the popular Korean alcoholic beverage, revolves around Willow, an orphaned young man who travels in search of his lover, a prostitute called Jade, after a natural disaster separates the two of them. (Also read: _ **Why Yoon Dowoon's Soju made us bawl)**_

 

The novel, prior to its initial release had gone through a lot of criticism since it focused topics like gay romance, prostitution, rape and abuse,with Yoon himself being subjected to death threats. But since the actual release of the book, the Korean-American author has received only praise and well wishes from fans and critics who have managed to grab a copy of the six hundred pages novel.

 

Infact, J.K Rowling herself commented on Twitter only hours after the book release that Yoon Dowoon 'is an incredibly talented young writer' and that he 'has single handedly brought a full fledged revolution into the field of romance literature'.

 

_______

About the writer: **Jae Park** is a freelance journalist, two time winner of the Reporter of the Year award and author of the NewYork Times Bestselling book, _Stories From The Terrace Of Building 09._

 

_________

  
Follow The New York Times on Facebook and Twitter(@NYT) and sign up for the newsletter for daily news updates.


	2. PART ONE

 

 

**P A R T : O N E**

 

 

_Don't be afraid,_

_little wanderer,_

_the world is all yours,_

_if you can play by the rules._

 

 

 

 **DOWOON WAS** A man who had too many run ins with fate to not believe in the concept of it. From what little experience he had playing the game of life, he had been both been played around by fate and played it as well as he could. In more ways than one, fate had been his one constant companion who seemed to give him impossible choices, but only meant well for him.

Dowoon was only sixteen years old when his parents sold him to the local gang, unable to pay back the loans that they had taken from them.

It hadn't been much of a surprise for him; he had six younger siblings (children of his father's different wives) from ages fifteen to as young as six months, a gambler for a father and a drug addict for a stepmother. One of kids would have to eventually be scarified.

And being the eldest one, Dowoon knew that that would be him. Not because his parents wanted to, but because he was the only one in the family who looked like he wouldn't tumble down like a house of cards if a breeze decided to blow. He looked useful, the rest of his family simply didn't. And there was a reason for that.

When he was six years old and his third stepmother (the one that always smelt like peaches) was in the picture, he learnt from someone that he could attend school free of charge. So off he went without any real idea of what school was, enthralled by the idea that he could do whatever he wanted with other kids his age and not have to choke on cigarette smoke or step on shards of broken beer bottles for atleast a few hours.

Pretty soon he realized that school was a lot more than what he thought it was, but even learning to write letters was easier than washing dirty clothes or cooking food that he couldn't eat anyway.

His parents where not against him attending school, nor did they care when his siblings followed him as they grew older since they were never home to actually see them come and go. Sometimes he thinks that they never really knew that they ever even attended school.

Dowoon did it all by himself; he dressed the kids (and they kept multiplying in number with his father's occasional visits), walked them to school, did his homework in the classroom, walked them all back home and tuck them all to bed without dinner because there was nothing edible in the house.

He never complained, because at that time he didn't know there was something to complain about. Dowoon was brought up in a tiny backward village where everyone had many siblings, everyone was beaten up and everyone had to take care of everyone else.

The only different thing from the others was how his mother kept changing while the other's didn't but in their little village school, where everyone one had gone through hell atleast once, the only trouble Dowoon had with it was that he had to constantly draw a new family portrait to replace the old one everytime his mother changed and the utterly tragic fact that the piece of cello-tape given to him was loosing its sticking power.

(He promised himself that he would study super hard so that one he would earn lots and lots of money and would be able to buy as many cello-tapes as he wanted so that he could draw many pictures and stick them.)

At thirteen years when he had to graduate to middle school, he began to start counting down on his days. He may have escaped his absentee father's eyes all the while, but there was always a bottom-even for the deepest well in the field.

Sorrowfully, he told his teachers that he wouldn't be able to afford to go to middle school. He didn't have any money to buy a uniform or even the prescribed textbooks. How could he, when he didn't have anything to feed himself with?

But fate hadn't quite let itself loose on him yet. His teachers adamantly told him that he had potential and must continue his education. They pitched money to buy him a uniform and some plain notebooks and collected used textbooks that were shabby, but readable.

"You have potential, Dowoon." His teacher told him tenderly, her kind eyes full of that gentle firmness. There was something else, something that seemed like hope, and awe, and he felt like he could do anything at all when he saw it. "You are going to become someone really successful doing what you love."

So Dowoon went along with it. He walked hours and hours to reach the middle school in the nearest town, having no money to spare for a bus ride and would sit in the farthest corner of the class and tried to remain as unnoticeable as possible. It wasn't that he didn't want to make friends, it was just that they asked too many questions.

"Why is you're face all messed up today?" The boy sitting next to him, one of those weirdly nice kids, Kim Taehyung, asked the day he came to class one day, having experienced a particularly unpleasant version of his father the other night. But how was he to explain the situation of his family life when the all the boys and girls in the classroom had never even experienced a proper shiner in the eye?

So he said nothing and actively tried to distance himself from everyone, their curious eyes and their harmless, but intrusive questions. That decision of course, led to him being labeled as the freak of the school, but things like that didn't really matter when he could feed himself properly at least once a day during the school lunches.

It did trouble him a lot more than he expected when classes became much more challenging than what he had faced before. He quickly understood that everything in the city moved too quickly. The people, the education and even time.

Dowoon learnt that his fellow classmates even went for extra tutoring (though he had no idea why they would spend more money on another place to learn the same things they were learning in school) and even though some of the nicer kids offered to help him after school, he couldn't because then he wouldn't reach home before dark.

This led to him miserably failing his first two tests.

But Dowoon wasn't really deterred by that. If he had ever learnt anything useful from his father, it was that if something went wrong it was his fault. To fix that fault he had to change himself. Maybe that was not the best advice to give to a child, but Dowoon had taken it to heart and reaped benefits more benefits than harm from it.

So he smiled at fate, who smiled back at him, changed and learnt from the new world before his eyes as he tried to adapt to it.

His siblings were put to sleep with math formulas, cleaning and cooking was done while reciting grammar and his long walk to school became the time when he learnt everything else in between. Time spared between classes were used to scribble down notes and between stuffing his face and practicing math on scrap paper, lunch break flew by faster than ever.

When the results of the next exam was announced, Dowoon was placed first in the entire school. And the same happened for the next test, and the one after that and then when the results of the final exams were released, his score was the highest in the district.

People called him a genius.

There were many tones used just for that one word. Some said it with awe-a hint of admiration, the slightest tinge of respect. Some said it causally like they couldn't care less. And some spat it out-a solid chunk of hate, dunked generously in boiling jealousy.

Dowoon found it fascinating that a single word with only one given meaning could hold so many more with just the change of tone.

Two years held his hand and ran, dragging him along helplessly like time always does. During that time Dowoon's family had grown; three siblings became four, four became five and five became six. Step mothers came and went, some of them nice, some of them too doped to notice what happens around them. His father dug himself deeper into the gambling world, taking loans and selling his latest wife when he couldn't repay them.

The well was drying out, he knew. He crossed out more days, spending every second cramming in every bit of information he could get from school. When that wasn't enough, he came to school a little earlier so that he could read those books in the library.

Dowoon couldn't explain to his teachers his desperation, couldn't even look at them in the eye when they found him with books prescribed for three or four grades above him. He would just cling to them tighter, like a dying men trying to quench his undying thirst.

And when mere hours before he left for school to write his final exams that would take him to high school, his father threw open the front door and pointed at him to the men behind him, Dowoon knew that he had reached the bottom of his well.

One look at the men towering over his father, dwarfing him in both size and attitude, and Dowoon didn't need anyone to tell him what he already knew.

Without looking back, or saying goodbye, he walked out of the house with the men with just the clothes on his back.

"Ya don't wanna take yer stuff?" One of the men asked, a heavily tattooed hand handing his father a leather pouch full of notes. Dowoon wearily wondered how much he was worth before shaking his head.

A fist caught him full on the cheek; white dots bursting into his vision like fireworks when pain shot up so quickly that it left him gasping for air. "You a mute? Open yer mouth before I rip it open myself!"

"I-I don't h-have anything." Dowoon gasped out. "I don't...have anything."

Somehow even as he uttered his words, it felt like he was describing something much more than just his possessions. It was then that he hung his head and silently, sincerely, cursed fate for its cruel taste in its games. It looked like Dowoon wasn't even allowed to take a peek at the rules before he was thrown into it.

He just followed the men meekly, taking in their jeers and insults without a word, heart beating wildly with the thrill of fear drowning him in its cold, cold waters. There was longing and grief, locked so tightly in him that they were monstrously unrecognizable when he realized that he would never write that final exam he had studied so hard for, he would never go to high school.

The gang was nothing like he had imagined, not that he had much left to imagination to begin with. It was as dangerous as he thought it was and he was made to do vile and disgusting things like transporting drugs and cleaning blood off the floor after a particularly nasty interrogation, but that was it.

He wasn't treated too badly, in a way he wasn't even acknowledged most of the time. Dowoon was a naturally quiet person and when he combined that with doing his work given to him diligently, he was allowed to escape with only a few stray beatings here and there.

But then fate, like a petulant child, wanted to play another game. A newer, thrilling, dangerous game.

Just weeks after he had joined the gang, a women dressed in too much color entered the warehouse where he worked along with a few other men. She stood there for an uncomfortably long time, blocking the sunlight as she leaned against the doorframe and stared at them while they worked.

Then she simply left, without a word escaping her brightly painted lips.

She came two days later dressed in another flashy bundle of furs in a limousine, which was sight in itself as it forced through the narrow alleys of their village, with one other women dressed in an all black full leather body suit and two guns visibly slung around her waistband.

The two of the, went into the meeting room with the Boss and some of his close men and as the door closed behind him Dowoon estimated idly that just the clothes those strangers wore could comfortably feed his entire family for at least an year or two, maybe even more.

Suddenly, minutes later later he was standing inside the meeting room, bearing the heat of the gaze of every person in the room.

"Do you know why you are here?" The flashy woman had an accent. A foreign one.

Dowoon looked down, shaking his head. "No, ma'am."

"He has manners." The woman in the leather body suit said offhandedly, sounding neither pleased or displeased by what she said.

"And he's so," Dowoon saw her hands rise up in his peripheral vision, "so pretty."

He harshly but his lip from jumping away when her fingers lightly brushed his cheeks, her long, colorful nails scraping against his skin. The metallic taste enveloped the tip of his tongue as blood burst out through his lip like fat, red roses blossoming in spring and spilled into his mouth.

"Oh," The woman said softly, her minty breath enveloping him uncomfortably,"you're bleeding, let me help you."

Her fingers threaded his hair, making him freeze under her touch. Then she pulled him harshly towards her so that he stumbled awkwardly close her face and then she kissed him hard.

The slightly powdery lipsticks of hers molded itself perfectly over his, her breasts pressed against him. Slowly her tongue, wet and tasting like mint, coyly lapped up the blood on his lip.

Disgust rose up Dowoon like a tidal wave and crashed down the sands of repulsion. He stood extremely still, body tense as he forced himself to not claw at his lips and tear them out.

She laughed, a clear, cold and remorseless sound as she slowly pulled away from the kiss. Her eyes were flashing with interest. "I'll take him."

 

_

 

  
They told him to pack up his things; he was going to America.

Dowoon stared at the Boss for a second, then said quietly, "I don't have anything to pack."

"Do you know how to speak English, kid?" The woman in the body suit asked, looking more interested now that the lady in the furs declared her interest for him.

"I can understand it," Dowoon said hesitantly, "but I can't speak fluently."

"That's good enough." Fur lady said, sounding quiet pleased with everything. She eyes him up and down, like a fresh piece of meat. Uncomfortable, Dowoon looked down and fidgeted with his hands. "They like it better when foreign things are being yelled at to them." She looked at the Boss meaningfully, "It's more exotic that way, you know what I mean?"

Everyone laughed. Dowoon idly wondered whether he could wash his work stained hands before he could leave, he hated when dirt got in between his nails. His siblings always used to get sick when they sucked their dirty fingers and then Dowoon had to find ingenious methods to make them better without buying medicine that he obviously couldn't afford.

He didn't think they would take him to The America if he got sick all of a sudden. Suddenly he wanted to suck at his fingernails.

"Do you know what is going to happen to you, kid?" The woman in the leather body suit asked later as he sat in the foreign limousine and marvelled at how big and luxurious everything inside was.

Dowoon shook his head. In the back of his head he noticed that her tone was a lot softer than the other two times she had spoken to him. It sounded like that voice his teachers used to take when they talked about the fraying condition of his clothes or the way he tried to make his handwriting as small as possible so that he could fit an entire years notes in one notebook.

"I guess it's better that way." Jamming a pair of earphones in her ear she closed her eyes. "You'll know soon enough anyway."

And soon enough came too soon.

America was an entirely new world. It was so much bigger than the pictures that he had seen, it was so colourful and loud and so full of people of every type. Everywhere he looked, there was something new for him to see. Dowoon looked at fate suspiciously.

Fate gave him a guilty grin.

Dowoon was shown to the back door of a whorehouse in a more suburban part of the country.

The backdoor lead to the place where the employees were housed. Dowoon did not need to be told what he was brought to become.

The housing conditions were good enough. It was large and spacious, with three floors and although three were two many couches in the living and every corner held some kind of trinkets, it was more comfortable than it was cramped. He spotted more women than men, most of them wearing casual clothing-sweat pants and t-shirts, eating cereal or watching the television or their phones.

Some of them greeted him while he entered, some cooed adorably and another-grey pyjama pants and stars wars t-shirt- went as far as to pinch his cheeks and told him that he was absolutely gorgeous.

The woman in the leather body suit, who was currently wearing and formal pencil skirt and a loose striped shirt with a pair of wicked looking heels, silently watched the women interact with him and then pulled him away from them after what she thought was a considerable amount of time.

By then Dowoon had been subjected from half mumbled welcomes to a textbook worthy kiss on his mouth.

"The men's quarters are on the third floor." She pointed to the top most floor that was visible to them even from the ground floor. "Most of them don't even sleep there, there aren't much of them in the first place, but I'll show you your room."

They climbed the stairs fairly slowly, allowing him to take a good look at the paintings-watercolour on the first floor, oil paint on the second and finally acrylic on the third-that adorned the walls, the sudden appearance of potted plants and windowsills and a brief glance of the rooms on each floor. The ground floor had around five rooms, the first, second and third floors had four rooms. He noticed that he hadn't seen a single personal photograph anywhere.

Dowoon was shown an empty room in the third floor, containing a single bed stripped bare of any sheets, a small window and a bedside table.

All of sudden, a feeling of intense loneliness coursed through him. Here he was in a country where he couldn't properly speak the language, among people that couldn't understand him and was brought against his will to pleasure people who are willing to pay for his body.

It wasn't just loneliness, it was fear and helpless too. He wanted to return to a home he never had anyway, and suddenly years worth of pain that he had stored in some crevice of mind burst out in torrents and drowned him in his own emotions.

He felt all alone in the world.

"Hey kid, "said the woman. Dowoon turned to her and found her looking at him a little awkwardly. She fiddled with the straps of the black backpack she was wearing, before pulling it away from her shoulders and offering it to him.

"This is...for me?" The backpack was heavy. Looking at the women for permission, he unzipped the bag and found clothes-a couple of pairs of jeans, some t-shirt, a few pairs of underwear and some basic toiletries.

She handed him a sealed brown envelope without answering his questions. "This is your passport, visa and other documents and also the contract that we made you sign on the plane. You will be getting your wages at the end of every month. There are rules that you need to follow, somebody will come and give you a rundown. Most importantly, don't try to escape and don't even try to contact the police. This is a country side and everyone knows what's going on, but nobody really cares. It's not going to help you if you are going to run around causing trouble."

She turned to leave. Then stopped beside the door, one hand on the doorframe. "And Dowoon?"

"Yes?"

A smile, small and a little sad, "Stay safe, kid."

Dowoon nodded, clutching at the bag like it was a lifeline. "Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how often I will be updating, but a HUGE thank to the everyone who is supporting this story. Cheers :)

**Author's Note:**

> I have hopes for this one, as abrupt as the idea may have been when it came to me. If school and life feel nice to me, I'll do my best to update this and give this the justice it deserves.


End file.
